The present invention comprises a new Ipomoea, botanically known as Ipomoea batatas (L.) Lam and hereinafter referred to by the variety name ‘KPOZ0001’.
‘KPOZ0001’ is a product of a planned breeding program for the development of Ornamental Sweet Potato cultivars. These plants are grown, not for their flowers, but for their foliage and plant habit characteristics. These plants flower very rarely and then only under strict short day lengths.
The new cultivar ‘KPOZ0001’ has compact and mounding plant habit, then becomes more outwardly trailing with age, vigorous, freely branching with dense palmately shaped foliage. The large foliage displays shades of olive green, bronze and reddish purple. Flowers, when present, are medium sized pale lavender pink.
‘KPOZ0001’ originates from an open pollination hybridization in a controlled breeding program in Gilroy, Calif., USA. The pollinations were made in the summer of 2008.
The female parent is the commercial variety ‘Sweet Caroline Purple’ (U.S. Plant Pat. No. 14,912). ‘Sweet Caroline Purple’ has a more broadly spreading plant habit, much deeper purple foliage color and produces flowers more readily than ‘KPOZ0001’.
The male parent of ‘KPOZ0001’ is unknown.
The resulting seeds were sown in October 2008 and ‘KPOZ0001’ was selected as one flowering plant within the progeny of the stated cross in January 2009 in a greenhouse in Gilroy, Calif.
The first act of asexual reproduction of ‘KPOZ0001’ was accomplished when vegetative cuttings were propagated from the initial selection in March 2009 in a controlled environment in Gilroy, Calif.